Ellen's Biography

Pianist/composer Ellen Hoffman's musical interests and accomplishments range from jazz to classical, Broadway to gospel, popular, ragtime, and everything in-between. She plays piano with several symphony orchestras, leads a jazz combo, is a composer, songwriter and vocal coach, directs a 75-voice community chorus and a 15-member chamber orchestra. As accompanist with the Oakland Youth Chorus and the Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir, she has also performed at music festivals all over the country, including the Monterey Jazz Festival, the New Orleans Jazz Festival, the Russian River Jazz Festival, and the White House in Washington, D.C. Ms. Hoffman is Music Director of the Berkeley Broadway Singers, a 75-member chorus, and is on the faculty at Contra Costa College, where she directs the chamber orchestra. She is now in her fourth year as director of the Jazz Singers Open Mike at Anna's Bistro in Berkeley. Long-time accompanist with the Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir as well as the Oakland Youth Chorus, and pianist with several Bay Area orchestras, she has also performed with jazz, classical and popular artists. These include Linda Ronstadt, Joan Baez, opera singer Frederica Von Stade, Chris Connor, Pharoah Sanders, Diane Schurr, Francine Lancaster, Marlena Shaw, Pete Seeger, Ronnie Gilbert, Bobby McFerrin, Linda Tillery, Pete Escovedo, Jon Hendricks, and Ed Kelly, as well as with internationally known ensembles such as the Duke Ellington Orchestra.

Long-time faculty member and former Music Director of Jazz Camp West, she was artist-in-residence at several Bay Area schools, including SF School of the Arts, Berkeley Arts Magnet, College Preparatory High (Oakland), and San Francisco City College, where she presented a guest lecture-demonstration on improvising jazz. For the past four years she directed the summer program of the Berkeley Community Chorus and Orchestra. She has performed solo piano jazz concerts throughout the Bay Area, including the Dance Palace at Point Reyes. Ellen's next concert, featuring premieres of several new songs with music by Ellen and lyrics by Bay Area post-Beat word stylist Jimmy Lyons, is Friday July 5th at the Freight & Salvage Coffee House in Berkeley, with guests Anna DeLeon, Vocalist, and Melecio Magdaluya, Saxophonist.

Ms. Hoffman has a ten-year association with the Oakland East Bay Symphony and Music Director Michael Morgan. She has received numerous commissions to compose and arrange orchestral music. She has a strong interest in African-American spirituals, and has arranged a number of spirituals for chorus and orchestra, collaborating with Gospel singer Terrance Kelly. Her music has been performed nationally by groups including the Atlanta Symphony, the Buffalo Philharmonic, the Vallejo Symphony, the Oakland Symphony Chorus, the UC Berkeley Chamber Ensemble, the University of Indiana Chamber Singers, and more. Her two newest compositions for chorus and orchestra, commissioned by the Oakland East Bay Symphony and the James Irvine Foundation, premiered in February 2002 at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland. One of these pieces, "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands," is a five-movement composition for chorus, orchestra and audience. A contemporary treatment of this famous spiritual, it contains a strong jazz element.

Ms. Hoffman was recently awarded a commission by the Continental Harmony Project in conjunction with NEA to write music for SONOS Handbells. This ragtime piece for orchestra and handbells will be based on the music of Scott Joplin.

Ms. Hoffman earned her Masters Degree from Mills College in Oakland, and her Bachelors Degree from the Univ. of Illinois in Champaign/Urbana. She was a California Arts Council Grants Panelist/Evaluator. She is co-founder and long-time board member of Rhythmic Concepts, Inc., which produces Jazz Camp and the Oakland Jazz Choir. She is co-founder of the Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir; she has been Artistic Director of the Oakland Jazz Choir.

Ms. Hoffman appears on numerous recordings, including her recent jazz piano CDs, "Daydreams," and "Anna's Home Brew." She is a prolific jazz song-writer as well as choral arranger. One of her songs, "Difficult to Say Good-Bye," was recorded by the prominent jazz vocalist Mark Murphy in 1991, and two of her jazz arrangements were performed by the Oakland Jazz Choir with Mark Murphy as guest artist. Several of her children's songs have been recorded by the Jefferson School Children's Chorus.

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AWARDS

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RECENT EVENTS

On the brighter side,
music moves the magic muse
to mend and meet
the mystic moment!

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